Minnesota Catholic Conference: Inside the Capitol Opposing Assisted Suicide, Defending Women's Rights, Understanding Minnesota's Legislative Session

Proposed Legislation in St. Paul Threatens Life, Human Dignity, and Religious Freedom

On Thursday, January 25, three weeks before the official start of the legislative session is set to begin, the House Health Finance and Policy Committee held a hearing on H.F. 1930, the End-of-Life Options Act. Medical professionals, people with disabilities, military veterans, faith leaders, and many more submitted written testimony and testified in person against the bill. But the committee voted along party lines to advance the bill out of the committee. H.F. 1930 will move to the House Public Safety Committee for further consideration.

The bill requires every physician and APRN in the state to make patients with a terminal diagnosis aware of their option to receive a prescription of lethal drugs to end their life, and only one doctor would be required to sign off on the patient’s eligibility and diagnosis. There is no mental health evaluation requirement of those who request assisted suicide, and the legislation contains few safeguards against elder abuse. Inevitably, as seen in other places, this law will expand beyond those who have a terminal diagnosis to people with disabilities, depression, or illnesses such as dementia and anorexia.

Assisted suicide coerces medical providers into participating in suicides, turning the profession from one that restores and heals into one that also kills. And the option of assisted suicide for some will end up limiting the healthcare choices of the rest of us. As Catholics, we are called to instead create principled care models that support the medical needs and human dignity of all people.

Take Action. Send a message to your legislators asking them to reject assisted suicide and instead work to expand access to quality palliative and hospice care. Go a step further by subscribing to MN Alliance for Ethical Healthcare (www.ethicalcaremn. org) and learn more about what you can do ahead of the next hearing on this bill.

Erosion of Rights Amendment

There has been a lot of speculation leading up to the session about whether the House will vote to pass the so-called constitutional “Equal Rights Amendment” and add it to the ballot in the November election. The ERA is a trojan horse to weaken women’s rights. The current language goes beyond attempting to protect “sex” as a class, but rather would protect people based on their “gender identity or expression.” This would diminish the hard-earned rights and protections of women and could eliminate conscience rights and religious liberty of all Minnesotans by compelling them to acquiesce to gender ideology.

Now, some legislative leaders are considering adding the “right to reproductive freedom” as language to the ERA to further entrench abortion rights and coerce Minnesotans into subsidizing it and participating in this practice.

This is more political gamesmanship than it is real policy. There are state and federal laws that ban discrimination. And Minnesota has already enacted several laws that protect the right to an abortion. This proposed constitutional amendment erases legitimate distinctions based on the sexual differences of men and women, erodes statutory and constitutional protections for conscience rights and religious liberty, and allows judges to punish dissenters who refuse to support the most extreme policies related to abortion and gender ideology.

Take Action. Visit mncatholic.org/action_21473 to reach out to state legislators and urge them to oppose the erosion of women’s rights and religious protections. Go a step further by exploring our ERA resource page and sharing it with your parish.

Minnesota Legislative Session: A Quick Guide

With the legislative session underway as of February 12, your state Senator and Representative are back at the Capitol crafting bills and deliberating on legislation that impacts our lives. To be effective at the Capitol as advocates, it is imperative that we not only know who represents us (the “people”), but also the policies being proposed, and the legislative process. We call those the three “p’s” of advocacy.

For many Minnesotans, the intricacies of the state legislative process can seem complex and daunting. But grasping the basics of how the session operates can empower citizens to better understand and engage with their government.

The legislative session runs on a two-year biennium. In odd-numbered years, the session begins on the first Tuesday in January and primarily focuses on crafting the state’s two-year budget. The second half of the biennium, occurring in even-numbered years, like 2024, is sometimes shorter in duration. The primary objective during this period is to pass a bonding bill to support the building of various infrastructure projects across the state, along with enacting any key policy matters that carried over from the previous year’s session.

Between now and May 20, the scheduled final day of session, the Legislature, which is split into 29 House committees and 20 Senate committees on various topics, will take up bills, hear public testimony, and deliberate key issues. For a policy bill to pass, in most cases it must be heard and passed by committees in both the House and Senate by March 22. Finance bills must meet an April 19 deadline.

In such a compact session with a lot of bills on the agenda, MCC will be busy weighing in on key issues and helping Catholics in the pews make their voice heard as well.

Take Action. By staying informed and engaged, Catholics can play a more active role in shaping Minnesota’s future. Subscribe to our Catholic Advocacy Network by visiting www.mncatholic.org/ join so that you can stay up to date on opportunities to share your position with your legislators and learn what MCC is doing at the Capitol.

The Minnesota Catholic Conference has been the public policy voice of the Catholic Church in Minnesota since 1967. The voting members of the MCC's board of directors are Minnesota's Catholic bishops.